Fitzsimon File

After House leaders spent few more hours of negotiating with state employees and House members reluctant to support the budget, House Speaker Jim Black made his way to the House floor  through the mob of cameras and reporters Wednesday and things returned to normal at the legislative building.

The House gave final approval to the mixed-bag $17.2 billion budget after a debate in which Republicans offered their usual clichés about big government and the false claims that North Carolina has the highest taxes in the South and Democrats listed many of the positive programs that the budget funds, no one pointing out what who the budget forgets. 

The Senate gave tentative approval to the budget in the shadow of the latest release from Raleigh best known backward-thinking tank that calls on Governor Mike Easley to veto the budget because it exceeds some arbitrary and absurd spending cap. 

The anti-government crowd in the think tanks and on the House and Senate floor repeatedly point out that this year’s budget spends $1.2 billion more than last year’s, an increase of up to 8 percent depending on the numbers you use.

What they don’t tell you is that virtually all of the increased spending pays to keep state government operating at the same level as last year, or for programs that almost no one opposes and absolutely no one has offered amendments to eliminate.

Increased enrollment at public schools, community colleges and universities, growth in Medicaid and the state employee health plan, repayment of money borrowed from the state retirement system, small pay increases for teachers and state employees, ABC bonuses for teachers, Health Choice for children—that is the bulk of the increased spending.

There are dozens of pet projects in the budget that deserve scrutiny and they provide fodder for snappy soundbites for television and pullout quotes for newsletters, but the problem with the budget is not that it does too much, it is that is does not do enough, especially in areas of affordable housing, HIV/AIDS, mental health, drop out prevention, etc. 

The Senate will give final approval to the budget Thursday afternoon and then the scramble to adjourn will begin but lawmakers are not likely to leave town for another couple of weeks.

There is still time for House and Senate leaders to write a progressive last chapter to this frustrating session. Wednesday brought both a big step toward that goal and a giant step toward achieving that goal and a giant step away from it.

The House voted to raise the state minimum wage by 85 cents an hour in a bill that also provides a tax credit to small businesses that provide health insurance for their employees. It was a historic vote to help the working poor and if the bill passes the Senate, more than 100,000 workers would benefit.

The Senate Finance Committee passed a bill Wednesday that raises the minimum wage too, but also cuts taxes on corporations and the wealthy, while making the 2001 increase in the regressive state sales tax permanent. That prompted Senator Martin Nesbitt to tell the committee that the General Assembly was “absolutely mashing the working people of the state,” a sentiment not often heard in the Senate halls. The Senate should forget about tax relief for the rich–they seem to be making out ok– and instead pass the House minimum wage bill to help workers instead of mashing them.

Lawmakers need to find a way to restore funding for more court personnel for Durham, money taken out of the budget at the last minute by Senator Tony Rand in apparent retaliation for House opposition to provisions for UNC that Rand supports. Durham is struggling mightily to fight crime and one of the biggest problems it faces is a massively overcrowded court system. That’s no place to take out political revenge.

The House still may pass a legislation to help state workers with a slightly higher pay raise and the bill needs to also include more money for affordable housing and the AIDS Drug Assistance Plan, two of the most egregious omissions from the budget.

And finally lawmakers need to leave town without enacting a lottery on the backs of the poor in North Carolina. Senator Marc Basnight says he isn’t sure he has the votes to pass the Senate. Good. North Carolina doesn’t need the lottery. It needs lawmakers with the courage to walk away from it and instead take a few last votes to help state employees, minimum wage workers, people who need housing or HIV/AIDS medication, and communities in Durham fighting crime.  There is still time to do some of the right things.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 11th, 2005 at 6:36 am and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.